Cato

I've got a pro ii strat with a similar heel design. Tbh I was surprised how much easier such a small and presumably inexpensive design change made to the upper fret access. It's a shame Fender only seem to feature it on US made instruments.

I'm not quite the opposite as I still do the thing of mentally breaking down the instrumentation down into it's component parts, but lyrics really stick with me. Generally if a song has any kind of rotation on the radio I'll pretty much know the lyrics off by heart before long, without making any conscious effort to do so. Although as I listen mainly to mainstream pop on Radio 1 it's not like I'm memorising Shakespeare speeches.

Just heard it for the first time. I quite like the vocal, reminds me of the pre BSSM albums when Kiedis was more a rapper than a singer. The instrumentation is 'pleasant'. Kind of sounds like a funk backing loop you'd use for practicing. All in all I don't hate it but I won't be going out of way to listen to it again. I say that as someone who was a big Chilis fan from Freaky Styley until they lost me with Stadium Arcadium.

I think you may have found the diamond amongst the manure.

The bass is very prominent on a lot of Pearl Jam's '10'. You can mostly get away with covering the songs without the 12 string or the fretless too.

Slightly off topic but that film was one of the big musical disappointments of my teenage years. I was a huge Zep fan in the early 90s, but I'd only ever heard the studio albums. So when an excited 14 year old me bought TSRTS on VHS it was a bit of a shock to find out how pompous and bloated their live show was at that point in their career. To be fair it wasn't all bad but to a teenager who's other favourite band were the Ramones that interminable version of 'Dazed and Confused' featuring Jimmy Page torturing his guitar with a violin bow for hours on end was bewildering at best.

My favourite is probably 'Rock n' Roll High School' with the Ramones. It's basically a Ramones live gig with a teenage rebellion/high school comedy storyline loosely stitched around it, but it works superbly in a sort of cult classic drive in B movie sort of way.

Certainly one of the more interesting and innovative luthiers of the last 40 or so years. I always fancied trying one of their fretless guitars. Probably be next to impossible to play in tune chords across more than 3 strings, but I reckon you could probably do a great 'fake' slide guitar on one.

I'm pretty sure that people cut and paste tabs from one site and post them on others, that's why you often see the exact same mistakes on multiple sites. Once an incorrect tab goes online it's only a matter of time before it's on all the tab sites.

My guitar and bass collection ranges between about £300 to £1750 new. At the moment my most played bass is a fretless Sire jazz which I think was a shade under £400 when I bought it new.

There was a fairly famous case in 2011 where an algorithm designed to keep a book competitively priced ended up pushing the price eyewateringly high. https://www.wired.com/2011/04/amazon-flies-24-million/ While I was looking for that link I also found this https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/12/16/beware-of-this-amazon-scam-cds-selling-for-thousands-of-dollars/?sh=550eb8401cd5 For what it's worth I don't believe it's a scam or money laundering as suggested in the Forbes article, apart from anything else the affected CDs mentioned in the article are pretty niche and unlikely to sell that many copies even at a normal price. The algorithm thing seems the most likely culprit.

My P Deluxe Special from around 2016 is my go to bass. Slim neck, versatile 3 band preamp that can be switched off for passive mode, tonally it covers a lot of ground. The one slightly odd thing about that version is that there's no tone control in passive mode. Doesn’t bother me but would probably be a deal breaker for anyone wanting to roll the tone down for a more old school sound.

I don't know specifically about EMG pickups but there are shortages on various random things at the moment because there is a shortage of shipping containers in the far east which is causing delays in products manufactured there being shipped to Europe. I know someone who payed 4 times the usual price for some Babylis hair curler gas cartridges on ebay because there are apparently none in UK shops at the moment.

Just discovered this on the Eastwood site. I think I'm in love.

I put a set of Aguilar 70s jazz pick ups into into a VM70s Squire Jazz. I didn't do before and after clips but I definitely didn't notice a radical difference once the new pickups were installed. I have wondered if they were too close in spec to the original Duncan designed Squier pickups in what was after all supposed to be 70s style Jazz.

I love the blocks. It's something a bit different on a P bass, makes it stand out from the crowd.

Esperanza Spalding. Meshell Ndegeocello

A friend of mine who is writing a book on online romance scammers interviewed a detective a while back who told her 'Action Fraud' is basically a third party call centre where civillian operators log details of complaints. The information is passed on to the relevant police units but apparently they're all completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume and scope of online and mobile phone based scams operating at the moment.

I've always really liked the aesthetics of Ritters. But I also think I'd look utterly ridiculous playing one. They look like they should be wielded by some sexy individual in one of Prince's backing bands, not some middle aged man in a pub. No 0ffence to any middle aged men playing their Ritter down the Dog and Duck.

I think perhaps the meaning of 'Rock and Roll' has shifted over time and now means different things to different people. 'Popular Music Hall of Fame' is perhaps a better term for what the institution was actually set up to celebrate.

I went for Eminem Devo MC5 New York Dolls Beck. The first 4 have all been massively influential even if , apart from Eminem, they never really enjoyed huge commercial success or became household names themselves. Beck is just unique.

I enjoyed that. Nice mellow tone somewhere between a guitar, a bass and a banjo. Although the guy is so far above my level of ability I'll not be switching the strings on my fretless to emulate him anytime soon.

Judging by their guitar range I think in the past when Music Man have done a signature guitar they've tended to design a completely new model with that artist, rather than just pop a signature on a model they already make. The Joe Dart Rays just about fit with that in that they have none standard electronics albeit in a Stingray body.

I like the Meteora shape, I nearly bought one of the double humbucker skinny stringers a couple of years ago. The bass looks like it might be a bit neck divey though.

I have no idea what kind of deal Joe Dart has with Music Man but considering that every bass they put his name on sells out within a few days I hope his remuneration reflects the not inconsiderable revenue he's brought in for the company. As for the Ray shaped Jazz I imagine it will be probably be a matter of when not if a limited run is made available and they'll be snapped up immediately too.